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10/03/2018 08:30 AM“One of my favorite graphics is a picture of a kitten looking into a mirror and seeing a lion reflected back,” says Rachel Sexton, Branford’s new assistant superintendent of schools.
“I’ve always felt like my job as a teacher was to be the mirror for students, so they could see their best selves,” she explains. “And as somebody who leads professional learning for adults, it’s the same process. I think that if we treat our adults as learners where the goal is to be their best professional teacher selves or best professional leader selves, they can then work with students to help students become their best selves.”
In her work to oversee the pre-K to 12 academic program and serve as an integral part of the executive leadership team of the district, providing the conditions for others to learn and grow beyond what they may even conceive for themselves, is one philosophy Rachel is imparting in her daily work.
Much of her direct work is with the district’s administrators and curriculum coaches to guide professional growth and develop teachers’ talents so that their work impacts and inspires students while the district continues teaching and learning practices aligned to Connecticut Core Standards adopted by the State Board of Education in 2010.
The standards represented a paradigm shift in the way curricula were developed and how teachers could meet teaching goals, measured by new assessment tests, to show that students are learning to the state’s expectations and abilities at each grade level.
“It has been a lot of change that has been put on educators,” says Rachel. “Particularly in elementary, they’ve been asked to really learn a lot of different kinds of things, where at the high school I think the challenge has more been around the shift in approach that’s required. So for the elementary schools, they’re dealing with the breadth of it, and I think high schools are dealing with the nature of it.”
Rachel also recognizes the new standards incorporate a way of learning most parents across the state don’t readily recognize.
“My brother will text me pictures of his son’s math problems and say, ‘I have no idea what this math problem is asking me.’ I get it! I understand that,” she says. “One of the things that our teachers are working on for themselves, but also working to help parents understand, is that the thinking process, the reasoning that a child applies—the child’s willingness to grapple with something and maybe not come up with an answer, but know where they got stuck—that’s just as valuable as getting an answer.”
There’s even a term for it: “productive struggle,” and teachers are working with parents to help them understand the idea, she says.
“Productive struggle is a valuable thing,” says Rachel. “It’s really hard to sit back and let a kid struggle, particularly when it’s your child and you just want to make it better. But if it really is about grappling with a new concept or with the application of something the child has learned, it’s okay for the child to struggle through it, and maybe not get the right answer, but to able to explain what they tried and what the strategy was. And so in doing that kind of work, I think we can continue to build understanding.”
Rachel has a great deal of admiration for the work of her predecessor, Dr. Anthony Buono, and of her new boss, Superintendent of Schools Hamlet Hernandez, on helping to guide implementation of Connecticut Core Standards in the district.
“We’re now in the second stage of that work,” she says. “The district did a lot in the last few years to put a lot of structures in place, and now, we’ve got an opportunity to build capacity of people to use those structures effectively...That’s where I think my background, and working with talent, as well as my work with curriculum and standards, really comes in.”
Rachel’s first day on the job with Branford Public Schools was on July 1. Prior to that, she held several positions with Area Cooperative Services Center (ACES), most recently serving as chief of ACES Institute.
“I helped to develop the regional transportation service that ACES is still piloting this year. So my work had something more of a business focus, but I continued to work with leaders and I ran our leadership academies, and that has been particularly helpful—like when I arrived six days in and, with Hamlet, was leading our retreat,” says Rachel.
Rachel also served as ACES director of talent development.
“In that capacity, I focused on professional learning for adults that included the administrators primarily, but also looking at how we use professional learning for an entire faculty to grow their capacity around work and to align to goals that schools have, or that an agency or district has,” she says.
She was also an education specialist for ACES, working with teachers and administrators in coaching and providing small- and large-group professional learning around instruction.
“I draw on that every day, both through working with our curriculum coordinators directly and working with the principals, as well as working with [instructional] coaches and teachers,” says Rachel.
In the 2000s, Rachel’s work as an education specialist, including working for four years with Walsh Intermediate School and Branford High School. In 2017-’18, as part of her Advanced Official Certification Program at Central Connecticut State University, Rachel interned with Hernandez during the academic year.
“Because I had spent a whole year here as an intern and had been here for four years before that as an education specialist, I knew the district was a good fit,” she says, “But one of the things that I said to the interview committee was that I think there’s a danger, because I know the district already, of assuming that I really knew it. I needed to be self-aware and recognize that knowing it at the surface level didn’t give me the actual understanding that I need to do the job. So a lot of the first three months and this fall has still been about getting that deeper understanding. And part of my goal was to be disruptive when I intend to be, but not unintentionally.”
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in history and modified with education from Dartmouth College. She has also studied at Brown University and Wesleyan College. Her first educational role was as a teacher. She taught high school in New Haven, Madison, Stamford, and Maryland.
“I miss teaching every day. I love teaching kids. I’ve been lucky where my job has allowed me to continue that kind of work,” says Rachel. “That’s usually the favorite part of any job I’ve had.”
Especially this year, Rachel intends to spend time in classrooms and among students.
“My goal is to be in every teacher’s classroom at least once during the year, and hopefully multiple times. I will at one point also shadow a student at each level so I get a sense of what it’s like to be a kid at each level,” she says.
She’s also continuing the district’s efforts to help its leaders develop their thinking and practices, and continuing to create an aligned, coherent system, including use of structures already in place, to achieve district goals. Rachel has also taken on leading professional learning, and better implementation, of Branford Board of Education policy on LGBTQ issues. The need was raised by parents as a concern at a June 2018 BOE meeting.
“We are beginning what will be a multi-year process of raising awareness and helping integrate everyone’s understanding of what LGBTQ students face, particularly transgender students or gender-fluid students,” says Rachel. “The work is just starting and will eventually involve not just working with staff members, who are the primary focus this year, but working with students and working with the community.”